One of the most effective methods found to date for limiting the spread of communicable disease is through effective personal cleaning, particularly through thorough hand washing. Thorough hand cleaning includes not only washing often with a suitable cleanser, but also washing for a period of time long enough to ensure sanitary conditions have been attained.
Many soaps and other detergent cleansers can provide the desired levels of hygiene if used correctly. However, these cleansers are usually supplied to the public in bar or liquid form, and people, particularly children, often give only a cursory wash, and therefore don't clean as thoroughly as required to remove dirt, grime and/or disease causing agents.
In one attempt to address such problems, liquid cleansers have been developed which change color after a certain amount of time spent scrubbing. Such cleansers tend to be expensive, however, and are primarily directed toward medical applications, such as surgical scrubbing applications. Thus, a need exists for a cleaning product which can be moderately priced and encourage desired scrubbing time, even when used by children.
Another problem experienced with cleansers today involves difficulties in handling the cleanser as well as the unsightliness around the sink area caused by the cleansers themselves. For example, when using a bar soap, not only can the bar itself become unsightly as it is used slowly over time, but soap residue on the soap dish or tray and the sink itself can also build up, causing an unsightly mess. Bar soaps are also notoriously slippery and difficult to hold onto when wet. Liquid cleansers also can cause problems. For example, inadvertent release of excess cleanser from the dispenser can lead not only to soap building up in and around the sink, but also on the bottle itself, causing the bottle to become slick and difficult to hold as well as messy. Liquid cleanser dispensers also tend to become clogged, due to build up of the liquid at the dispenser outlet.
As such, a further need exists for a cleanser which can be delivered to the consumer in a form which can provide the desired cleaning action without causing untidiness in or around the sink.
Expanded foam is a material which has been used to produce a large variety of articles. For example, expanded polystyrene foam has been used to form packing material and light weight disposable articles such as plates, cups, serving trays, etc. Recently, foams have been developed which are more environmentally friendly, i.e. biodegradable, than the petroleum based foams of the past. In certain instances, these biodegradable foams can include a destructured starch.
Destructured starch is starch which has had the crystalline structure destroyed and has become thermoplastic in nature. A starch can be destructured by various methods involving combinations of pressure, heat, and mechanical work in the presence of plasticizers and/or destructuring agents such as urea and alkaline hydroxides. For example, starch can be heat treated above the glass transition temperature and melting points of its components, generally above about 120° C., in the presence of destructuring agents to become destructured starch. For additional information concerning destructured starch, see, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,569,692 to Bastioli, et al. which is incorporated herein by reference as to all relevant matter.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,184,261 to Biby, et al. which is incorporated herein by reference as to all relevant matter, discloses a water-resistant degradable foam that is an extrudate of a mixture of a thermoplastic polymer, destructured starch, and a plasticizer.
The present invention provides an extruded cleansing product formed of an expanded foam material that overcomes problems with cleansers of the past. In certain embodiments, the foam matrix can include a destructured starch.